In my experience, Malaysian cities (both KL and Penang) suffer from a lack of available taxis, a lack of taxi drivers willing to use their meters, insufficient around-town public transportation (though it might be sufficient for commuters), and insufficient pedestrian access in the form of usable sidewalks and crosswalks. UberX in both cities seems affordable, rarely exceeding 10 Ringgit (USD2.40) for a 15-20 minute ride with the normal fare. So despite a general preference to walk or take public transit, I’ve ended up using Uber here, and using Uber as a tourist worries me a little.

Just updated my flight history map since I now have 10 years of data. Overall, I’ve flown 1,038,882 kilometers (645,000 miles) since graduating high school, with six consecutive years flying over 100,000 kilometers. See the map:

Singapore is rated the #1 country in the world for expats, according to HSBC’s Expat Explorer Survey. While high marks for wage growth, economic confidence, and entrepreneurship are obvious, I was confused and troubled by how Singapore ranks 11th in HSBC’s metric for tolerance. Singapore was also #6 on the New York Times’ 52 Places to Go in 2015.

Singapore gets a reputation in western media for being a miraculous city-state in Southeast Asia that is clean, efficient, pro-business, futuristic or future-ready, and a melting pot of various traditional cultures that is appealing and exciting to people from outside the region. Some of that reputation is warranted, but a lot is left out of these narratives about Singapore that I think expats and tourists would want to know:

Here’s a common market research scenario: we need to find more about the people who live in the area where we’re launching a TV and/or radio campaign. Maybe we just want to know demographics. Or maybe we want to know what restaurants are nearby.